Poles have always talked eagerly and volubly about their national poet Adam Mickiewicz, either with scholarly interest or the selfless passion of the amateur. To discover the truth about Mickiewicz, to know everything about him, has been the equivalent for Poles to knowing the very past and future of the nation: its essence, its potential and its ideal form. This same enthusiasm gave birth to larger monographs by the 'Mickiewiczologists' Jozef Kallenbach, Juliusz Kleiner and Stanislaw Pigon - each of them a lengthy narrative describing the life of the bard in a broader national and psychological context. Although such great narratives have become passé, and have given way to a multitude of smaller stories, these beautiful and daunting monographs on Mickiewicz served for a long time as a second, posthumous incarnation of the poet. The reason was simple - we had no other work which matched these giants in scope and power, which could relate the history of Mickiewicz in a contemporary language, with a consciousness of the limits of our knowledge, and which refrained from over-interpretation. We didn't have one - but now we do.
Mickiewicz. An Encyclopaedia, compiled by Jaroslaw Marek Rymkiewicz, Dorota Siwicka, Alina Witkowska and Marta Zielinska, four Mickiewicz scholars from the Institute of Literary Studies at PAN (the Polish Academy of Sciences), is a work of an entirely new kind. This nearly 700-page volume, consisting of alphabetically-organized key words, is reminiscent of a modern megalopolis: it has neither center nor borders, but burgeons outward in all directions, incorporating entire fields of old and new scholarship. Here the reader will learn, for example, what the poet liked to eat, and in what style Countess Puttkamerowa's boudoir was furnished; how many linden trees encircled Maryla's arbour in Tuhanowicki Park, and precisely in which cell of the converted Basilian monastery Mickiewicz was imprisoned; the origin of his family crest; and what fate befell his brothers. Such details are given their place alongside more standard topics in 'Mickiewiczology', which are certainly not lacking in this book. Under the best sub-headings in Mickiewicz. An Encyclopaedia we can not only read about what we know, and what we do not know, but also observe how fabrications mix with truths, and imagination with memory, in order to yield the beginnings of knowledge. For this is the only kind of knowledge there is. (Renata Lis)
- Mickiewicz. An Encyclopaedia / Mickiewicz. Encyklopedia
edited by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, Dorota Siwicka, Alina Witkowska and Marta Zielińska
Bertelsmann Media, Warszawa 2001
© Bertelsmann Media, rights available
175 x 249, 672 pages, hardcover
ISBN 83-7311-012-7